Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

Afterward, the four of us gathered a moment in the courtyard before Ric and Tallgrass took off in the ’Vette.

“I like these CinSims,” Tallgrass said. “Why didn’t this Nightwine bigwig join us?”

“He’s a hermit,” I said. “Godfrey and Molly tend his few needs and he treats them very well.”

“Other than chipping them in place,” Ric noted.

Tallgrass shook his head. “Those Emerald City CinSims fresh from the farm didn’t seem happy, or even quite all there.”

Ric answered before I could. “Godfrey’s alter ego at the Inferno Hotel, Nick Charles, explained that it takes a while for CinSims to take hold on a placement.”

“Nick Charles?” Tallgrass sounded impressed. “The elbow-bending gent detective from the old movies? That guy was a hoot.”

“We’ll stop in and see him. We can order one of Delilah’s Brimstone Kiss cocktails there.”

“‘Brimstone Kiss.’ That sounds like real firewater, Miss Delilah.”

“Rick Blaine from Casablanca loved it,” I bragged.

“It’s a lot early for booze, Ric,” Tallgrass said, “but anything Humphrey Bogart goes for is good with me.”

So off they went. Quicksilver barked once and ran around the cottage to the back. I suspect he had pestered Woodrow, the yard troll, into playing fetch with him.

I returned to the cottage to start a find-and-interrogate list.

With Ric doing the town with his mentor, now was a perfect time to delve into the pesky question of who might have fathered me. I didn’t want to introduce Ric just yet to the idea that my mama was a vampire. Encountering Vida in the absurdly long-lived flesh had tweaked more than my overdeveloped curiosity bone; it had quadrupled my fear factor.

I came up with a long roster of hair-raising prospects for Daddy Undearest, starting with Cesar Cicereau, Vida’s werewolf sugar daddy.

I’d already tackled number two on the list, Sansouci, the werewolf boss’s involuntary enforcer and indentured vampire stud.

Also on the Gehenna Hotel roster, I could list the indentured house magician with the twin fey accomplices, Madrigal. An unlikely suspect, but he’d been there when Vida and Loretta had owned expiring life spans. I smiled to think that Cesar Cicereau just couldn’t kick the women out of his life without their coming back . . . and back.

Moving on, there was the pre-vampire Howard Hughes, buying up Vegas properties in the sixties and growing more isolated and phobic every day, aiming to hang on to his empire by being turned vampire.

And I couldn’t eliminate Vegas mover and shaker Hector Nightwine, another film and media empire force, so eager to provide me with room, board, and constant surveillance. Although imagining Hector fathering anyone except by test tube was a disturbing vision.

Finally, there was Snow, mystery supernatural, age and aim unknown, but way more invested in me and the future than any Vegas figure of the past was, including Vida.

All of them could have been around long enough to sire me. All had offered me opposition, attempts to make me play prey to their predator, and had claimed to have my best interests at heart, or to sell me on the idea that their best interests were also mine.

All of them radiated the various degrees of lust from knee-jerk pseudosexism to something much more personal that came naturally to being a power on a guy’s playing field like Las Vegas. Two didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. One was likely an ice king in Hell. One I actually liked.

I’d found my way to Vida, so it was time to connect her to all the usual suspects and find what had made the two and two that became me and Lilith. I didn’t expect to unbuild Rome in a day, but I expected to find some unexpected possibilities.

So I donned my general-purpose spandex black-leather leggings, a trapeze-shaped turtleneck thigh-long top that hid my pared-down version of a cop’s duty belt under it, and ballet flats covered with suede gaiters to the knee. I had to wear something vintage as a lucky charm.

The familiar obligingly tarnished to black with faint rainbow highlights and formed a chain-swagged steampunk epaulet on my left shoulder.

I was a either a vain cat burglar or a woman not worth the trouble of tangling with.

QUICKSILVER SURVEYED MY new look, and then sat in front of Dolly’s massive chrome grille, refusing to move.

“No,” I said. “Nix. This is a solo mission. It’s investigative, not dangerous. I don’t need an escort.”

I had to circle way around him to get to the driver’s seat, and then he leaped into the passenger side through the open window. We had a stare-down, but I finally pulled onto Sunset Road with him still installed, feeling good and guilty.

Not much later I reluctantly left him guarding Dolly in a low-rent parking garage so I was able to join the women slipping into the shade of the Chez Shez royal awning to buy lotions and bath oils. They lined up two deep along the counters, sipping gratis wine while buying the rare oils and costly perfumes. The combined scents were sublime. Like a Goth shadow I slipped around the end of one counter and into the shop’s rear.

Shezmou was far back in the manufacturing area, laboring by oil-lamp light, working his ancient grape press. The sack that held the grapes or oil seeds he crushed was dyed dark bloodred from centuries of usage. Ancient Egyptians favored red wine and extreme afterlife intervention.

I could easily imagine torn-off human heads inside that sack, being crushed by the steady power of Shezmou’s broad, muscled shoulders as he worked the two wooden poles like opposing oars to twist the sap out of the sack.

The liquid that dripped down today was clear and golden. Olive oil.

I could inhale through my nose again.

Shez gave the sack a final, emptying wrench and stepped back to squint at me. I must be silhouetted by the lamplight at my back.

“Who dares to intrude on Shezmou at his press?”

“Sorry, big guy. I need a quick favor.”

He wiped his palms on a piece of white linen. “The favor of the gods always pours down on the Mighty Delilah like the finest embalming and funerary oils.”

Oh, goodie, Irma said.

“Really, Almighty Shez, you can stop calling me Mighty. I am a mere pipsqueak compared to your power and nobility. And your customers will find the usage . . . unfitting.”

“What is a pipsqueak?”

“Something insignificant that your sandaled foot could crush like a grape.”

“Or like the heads of the damned.” He grinned with the zest of a proud craftsman.

That had been the dark side of his godly role . . . acting as Osiris’s headsman and using damned heads as twist-off caps to throw into the bottomless pit of the Egyptian underworld.

Right now, I needed to persuade Almighty Shez to be my doorman.

“What then should I call you?” he was asking, polite in the way of demon gods who can grease their skids with your own blood.

“Delilah would do.”

He inclined his head. “So, pipsqueak,” he said instead with relish, “what favor can I perform for you?”

“First, how did you find your new shopgirl?”

“Hastur came to view my product . . . line?”

I nodded. Shez needed to update his ancient formal manner of talking, and get with his new career as entrepreneur.

He spoke on. “She seemed an excellent canvas for the new powdered Jewels of the Nile Eye you encouraged me to create. I wish to impress the emissaries of the other foreign powers when they come to sue me for custom.”

I nodded. The semiprecious stones in the broad Egyptian collar he wore formed a natural palette for a killer eye-shadow collection . . . malachite green, amethyst, lapis-lazuli blue, deep red carnelian. Shezmou was an unemployed god I was responsible for jerking into the twenty-first century. The least I could do was to find him a commercial niche.